I lose my pants in a wormhole… can I just delete my legs?
Nations can really get around, and don't take that as a euphemism because mine is a clean, safe, and dubiously religious pan-dimensional household!
We have what old man China calls the "State of States," which I will strive to abbreviate as anything other than SS. There are children in this house, and by children I mean Germany! My precious chirpy chick! I would cover his ears, but I forget he doesn't have psychic hearing, and he's not a fan of my arms stretching all the way up the stairs to touch him for any reason. I'm not a big fan of it either. Once I start stretching, I don't know how to stop.
Anyway, the SofS(?) is a special state of awareness that can be accessed through deep concentration. It's instinctual, but it does come easier to some than others, based on things like seniority, earth power level, and overall ruthlessness. This is the state in which we can feel our land and people. It's therapeutic. We feel millions of heartbeats at once, combining with the deep hum of the earth itself and the presence of our fellows leaving their signatures upon the continents.
When I allied with France and Spain, they taught me how to use the Double-S to absorb more earth power and get high.
I said I was one with the whole planet.
They said I was high.
The Stasta has another general purpose, kind of a workaround to normal human means and the closest thing to my logic-defying powers. This is called zooming.
No one realized we were even doing it at first. It's that damn instinct aspect. Then one day, England raised the question of how the heck he walked to Japan in the span of a day, and we all started realizing something funny was going on.
Basically, if someone moves while in the nation-state, and keeps his wits about him, he can bend space-time around himself and travel from Point A to Point B at seemingly incredible speed. America's the best at it. I don't think the kid's ever taken a plane to a world meeting. He wraps his distortion bubble around his pickup and drives. Germany and Japan keep asking how that affects the vehicle. America overanalyzes, and because he can never explain anything without science or at least a conspiracy, he's usually at a loss. I don't blame him. I see hypercubes every day, and I still can't explain how the hell they work.
It's not quite teleportation, and even if it were, there'd still be restrictions for nation privacy. America's not allowed to zoom in large cities. Germany can't zoom unless he's visiting another country. Some old-timers like England and France only zoom accidentally, while Italy thinks it's the only way to travel and has been using it to ironically escape military training since who knows when. Seriously! Italy has wicked calves, and he slumps in his chair like he didn't get a couple million steps in during his lunch break.
I'm just thinking about this anomaly when Germany's heavy footsteps come downstairs. He knocks on my open door, and I turn in bed.
"Austria sent me an email. We've been invited for supper."
"No way!" I exclaim. "That old ostrich learned how to email? Did he use his beak?"
"Did you turn him into an ostrich?"
"No, but it's on my list."
"Do I need to see your list?"
Now, what Germany doesn't know is that with England's help, I turned Austria into a chicken during the Seven Years' War, so ostrich is no new territory, only a new exploration. That being said, he still shouldn't see my list.
"No, you should not see my list."
Germany puckers his brows, but gestures for me to follow. I float up the stairs ahead of him with my hands behind my head and settle myself on the living room couch.
"How're we getting there?"
Germany slips on his running shoes — the more beat-up pair that he uses for magical travel. "I'm going to zoom. I suppose you can travel in whatever way you see appropriate. Just make it inconspicuous."
A smirk finds its way to my face. "I'll make a wormhole, then. Just an eensy-weensy fold in space-time I can hop through. You wanna race? You only have to cross a few mountains, and you're fast anyway."
"I still don't like doing it. It gives me a headache and screws up my regimen."
"Yeah, but your legs will bulk up from EP anyway."
"Today wasn't leg day, brother. It was core."
"Then take the day off tomorrow."
"Maybe… Will you see me off?"
"Yup," I say as I finish renewing my evening outfit. The air feels warm around me for a second as my clothes shimmer and shift. The sleeveless sweatshirt grows and morphs into a tweed jacket, and the gym shorts stretch themselves down into a comfortable pair of slacks. Faux leather dress shoes mushroom onto my stockinged feet. I top it off with a newsboy cap and one of Germany's vintage watches, just to look as aesthetic as possible in a diamond-encrusted, fart-scented place like Vienna. Wait, farts…
I snap my fingers, and my whole outfit instantly smells like lilacs. Might as well be the night's air freshener.
Outside, Germany makes sure no one is out on the street or looking out any windows. "Make your wormhole inside," he tells me. Then he shakes it all out and relaxes his shoulders. All the tightness goes out of his face. His eyes close, and his chest expands ever so gently as he breathes. He's all techno-brained, so the mystical parts of life never came easy to him. It takes a bit, but I start to see the faint golden aura of his earth power flaring to life as he enters S2. When his eyes open, they're glowing.
Germany stretches his legs, then takes off. His form flickers and seems to lag. I see him running to the end of the street in a streamlined way, yet I also see him glitching through space-time, and I know that when it looks like he's reached the end of the street, he's probably already at the Austrian border.
I dash back into the house and jump up on the couch. Focusing at a single point of the carpet, I summon my own brand of higher being. "I am not of this world," I say aloud to help. "I am above this world, and I can bend it. Just a teeny little bend. Hardly a wrinkle in the grand scheme of things. Push and pull. Push and pull."
I push my arms forward, reaching for Vienna, then pull them towards me. An enormous weight is in my hands. I reach out again and tug it closer. Closer. My mind's eye sees the world secretly warping and folding beyond human perception. Mountains are crushed under each other. Roadways are squished into roller coasters. Entire cities are forced into two dimensions, then wrenched back into three.
The world is folding at my command!
The carpet starts to undulate, then boil. Germany's dogs bark and squeal at the disturbance. I reach my arms up to the ceiling, and with a fabulous, floating leap and jump, I plunge down through the floor and into the void.
No mountains are really crushed. My wormhole is smaller than a pinpoint. (That's why it's called a wormhole, duh.) My ears pop, but not before I hear every bone shatter like glass and every muscle squeal like a popped tire. I want to scream as I feel my body squeezed and crushed and stretched into infinite length and nonexistent width. My consciousness blows up in my spaghettified face, as if it's squirting out my mouth and swelling into the particle-sized space between my ruined physique and the mottled edge of the path. I lose all sense of comfortable being and let myself drift, bobbing in and out of reason. What am I? A blob? A string? Only an idea? Ideas compose everything. There is no existence without ideas. Perhaps I am only an idea. Not actually real.
Dammit, I am not going to die and get rejected again inside a wormhole. What would Fritz tell his puppet friends!?
I force my formless void-self into some kind of cohesive mass and take in what light is visible. Light? No, darkness? A rainbow of colors that don't exist? Line? Shape? Form? Duality? Philosophy? Conflict? Evolution? Reformation? Revelation? Cynicism? Gott, I'm happy I don't have a brain right now. I'm immune to having my mind blown, but this would come close.
I feel motion slowing, and just as I finally realize surreal memes are actually the most genius creation of all mankind, I hear a deafening crick-crackle-crunch as I'm reassembled. My consciousness pours back down my throat. The stomach gurgles loudly, and I'm possessing myself again.
Lying on Austria's front lawn.
Something feels unusually breezy.
I push myself up on jelly arms, savoring the feeling of grass like it's a completely foreign concept. Physical existence… is this a joke?
"I ammmm… mAN!" I slur with a finger in the air. Then I haul myself up and stagger up to the front door of Austria's buttsniffer mansion. Germany flickers into being beside me. I reach out to hug him with tears in my eyes.
"Lud, I really frickin' hate wormholes."
"Can't you still zoom? Or you could teleport."
"Ach, but wormholes are my mackerel. I see the shiny skin, and I think it will taste good, but it doesn't."
Germany gives me a reassuring pat before knocking on the door. The ostrich comes to greet us in a surprisingly modern suit, although he refuses to wear any semblance of a modern tie and froths lace at the neck just as he always has. His beak of a schnoz turns upward at my appearance. I look at my hands. Still intact. I haven't switched thumbs like I did the first time around.
"What's up, cuz?" I greet him. "You look a bit pale. Forget that vampires come from Prussia? Kesese…"
"Prussia, you're in your underwear. Really, I've seen you in the midst of bigger and darker antics than this. In a humorous mood, are you?"
"Well, I am an antic master, in more ways than one, and I'm not in my underwear! I've got this jacket on! And my… slacks…"
The jacket is certainly there, but my slacks are nowhere to be seen. I feel the pink in my own white cheeks. Beside me, Germany is stifling his vicarious shame honed from years of melodrama. Then he shoves me through the door and closes it quickly behind.
I wonder how a man without his slacks looked shooting out of the ground.
Probably the same as a baby nation in a similar situation.
I've had the "zooming" and "nation-state" headcanons since I entered the fandom. It really feels amazing for whoever enters that deep feeling. Prussia "eats mackerel" no matter what universe he's in.
Updated by Syntax-N May 22nd, 2020. Reposters cursed.